I write more about Covid than climate because we can actually dramatically decrease the problem with rampant viral transmission in the next few years with tools on hand if we make a global concerted effort. The climate is much, much more complex and multifaceted and just maybe beyond our most
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: Suffering from Premature Emaskulation?
You don’t have to be an athlete or movie star to care about your health. You, too, can wear an N95 to keep viruses out of your body. This latest mutation is extremely contagious, leading to very high case numbers right this minute. If we want to stop Covid from
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: It’s World Brain Day!
The WHO announced it on twitter with a list of things to do for a health brain: be active, eat well, sleep well, stimulate your mind, look after your heart, and wear a helmet. Hmmm…. it feels like something’s missing!! Just last Tuesday, the CDC Report on Disability indicated another
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Where There’s Money, There’s Masks
“They only insist on unmasking you and your kids because you are not valued by the powers that be. Be smarter and mask up” (from Dr. Spela Salamon) On film and series sets, the actors are not expendable. They must stay healthy for sake of everyone’s paycheque. So everyone on sets
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Unmasking the Real Villain
The Tour de France is now mandating masks after several riders got Covid and had to leave the race. But so many other reports of people getting physically sick still attribute illness to bizarre causes: People love to feel safe and secure, so it’s comforting to think we just need
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Covering Up a Pandemic
Earlier today, Salvatore Mattera wrote this piece about the media silence — or censorship — around Covid. Otherwise known as propaganda by omission. This rest of this post is entirely from that thread: The 1918 flu is called the “Spanish flu” because in most places, the media censored it. Except
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Ethics of Risk Taking
If you were having a lot of sex with various people — or even if you just had a quickie with one person without any protection, then having unprotected sex with the next person becomes a moral issue. Maybe it’s just the case for those of use who came to age
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Y’all Masking: The Solidarity in Safety
It’s taken off so much, it’s making Twitter almost unusable for anything else. Picture after picture after picture of people wearing masks in their daily life. At first it was just a fun little thing – let’s all post pics of ourselves in masks! There have been several other times
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: CDC Protecting Interests Instead of People
The CDC finally acknowledged that Covid is still here, which is amazing, but they still can’t nail the comms: Dr. Lucky Tran added the corrections on this one to obliterate the two tiers of prevention. The CDC still have hand-washing as a priority despite also acknowledging that the VIRUS IS
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Avoiding the Consequences
Our inability to measure long term consequences from short term gains will be the death of us. Covid, climate change, and conflict are holding a mirror to our collective behaviours. Henry Madison wrote about the shift back to normal that’s essentially pushing us off a cliff towards the default normal we
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Movie Stars Wear Masks
Lots of people are still wearing masks. It can feel a bit like we’re the only ones at the store, getting pointed at or coughed on despite intentionally and conscientiously reducing the spread of a brain-invasive disease. But entire industries, like film sets, are maintaining masking to protect their employees
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Hope for Long Covid in IgG Study
Professor Akiko Iwasaki and team just put out a pivotal paper showing that “passive transfer of IgG from patients with Long Covid into mice recapitulates increased pain and other symptoms.” IgG stands for Immunoglobulin G; it’s the most common type of antibody found in blood circulation. Without enough of them, you
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Avoid the Best to Avoid the Rest
Covid is amazing for harming the immune system, right up there with HIV. Even mild and asymptomatic cases of Covid harm the body’s ability to fight off infections, and makes us susceptible to other viruses and parasites. Yale made a poster about it: Statement from Yale School of Public Health (sources here):
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Chomsky’s Passing – NOT
Noam Chomsky passed today at 95. — Actually, he’s still alive. He was just sent home from the hospital after a stroke, and people feared the worst!! His efforts to dig beyond the surface level of propaganda in the media is needed now more than ever. I try to follow
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Ignorace and Apathy and Unwillingness to Act
Three articles came out in the past few days that should remind us that Covid is really here, and maybe we should act on it. But all the facts in the world can’t penetrate the wall of hopeful denial. Lynn Parramore interviewed Dr. Philliip Alvelda in Institute for New Economic
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Art of Helping
“A little learning is a dang’rous thing;Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,And drinking largely sobers us again.” ~ Alexander Pope Is it, though? We’re in a mental health crisis and people need more access to help. How much learning is necessary to help
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Best Explanation of Reagan’s Neoliberal Policies
Just this from xeviuniverse. Here’s the link in case embedding doesn’t work. @xeviuniverse I didnt have time to cover all the other vomit inducing things he did ♬ original sound – Xevi
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Good News: You CAN Be Saved!
The CDC put out some crappy comms with an image with a mask photoshopped upside down, with “N95” shopped onto a KN95, and only on the patient, not the doctor, which suggests that doctors don’t need to wear them. I almost feel bad for how hard they failed on this except
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Coming Soon to a Hospital Near You
The Minden ER closed June 1, 2023. A recent article in the Minden Paper explains why this should worry all of us. Jeff Nicholls said, “After we analyzed the decision-making processes before, during, and after the closure of Minden ER, our team audited teh audited financial statements of every hospital in
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Living in a False Reality
Without testing or wastewater data warning us of rising cases of viruses in our regions ahead of time, we can only look to excess deaths after the fact. Bleak times. This is a graph of Finland’s excess deaths relative to pre-pandemic levels. Pay attention to that blue line. It’s the
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